I introduce the notion of ``neglect defaulting,'' which labels the propensity to neglect possibilities which are ordinarily sensibly neglected. In familiar contexts we are well-tuned to recognize when to override the default. But outside the range of familiar experience --- here in the...

These are draft chapters for "Cognition and Social Motivation", to be published by Routledge in late 2007. The book should go formally into press about January 1. Comments welcome. The chapters will be posted as they emerge from a final read-through, but with Chapter 9 posted early for use in...

A controversy among economists and others interested in the limits of rational choice analysis, still running after an onset at least two decades ago, concerns whether intelligent people, and especially experts, can be subject to cognitive illusions. This note provides a striking illustration...

A "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" (Guardian, 9 September) is the latest reminder of the persistence of controversy over who wrote Shakespeare. But the skeptics' case depends on a logical slip. The starting point is always some close variant of the claim that while Shakspere (a common spelling...

The paper gives an account of several well-known cognitive illusions in terms of contextual defaults which guide intuition where familiar cues are ambiguous. When the default is inappropriate, as it sometimes must be, the result is a cognitive illusion. In contrast to Kahneman & Tversky...